Personalizing Theme Elements: Visuals and Sounds (part 3)

4. Choosing a Screen Saver

Screen savers don't save screens. (In long-gone days when screens were invariably CRTs and many offices displayed the same application at all hours of the working day, having an image move about during idle times probably did extend the service life of some displays.) And they certainly don't save energy. But they're fun to watch. To see the current offerings, right-click the desktop, choose Personalize from the shortcut menu, and then click Screen Saver.

Note:

If you use a multimonitor setup, some of the screen savers supplied with Windows (specifically, 3D Text and Photos), unfortunately, "save" only the primary screen. The others go blank when the screen saver goes into action.

The Screen Saver Settings dialog box (shown below) includes a handy On Resume, Display Logon Screen check box. If you work in an environment where privacy is not a big concern, you can save yourself some hassle by clearing this check box.

5. Customizing Mouse Pointers

As you have undoubtedly noticed, Windows has dispensed with the time-dishonored hourglass mouse pointer. That might be a welcome development, particularly if you've logged a lot of hours with earlier versions of Windows. On the other hand, if you think an hourglass depicts the passage of time more unambiguously than a rolling doughnut, you can easily bring back the old shape. You can customize the entire array of pointer shapes your system uses by right-clicking the desktop, choosing Personalize, and then clicking Change Mouse Pointers (in the left pane of Personalization, shown in Figure 1). On the Pointers tab of the Mouse Properties dialog box, you can select a pointer type in the Customize box, and then click Browse to select an alternative pointer shape. (The Browse button takes you to %Windir%\Cursors and displays files with the extensions .cur and .ani. The latter are animated cursors.)

Just as Windows encapsulates a collection of sound choices as a sound scheme, it wraps up a gamut of pointer shapes as a mouse-pointer scheme. The system comes with a generous assortment of predefined schemes, making it easy for you to switch from one set of pointers to another as needs or whims suggest. Figure 3 shows the list.

If you sometimes use your portable computer in lighting conditions that make it hard for you to find the pointer, consider switching to one of the large or extra large schemes. If nothing else, those will give your eyeballs a larger target to pursue.

For something perhaps more novel than large or animated pointers, try one of the inverted schemes. These make your mouse pointer appear to pass behind the text on your screen, rather than in front of it. (It's an acquired taste.)

If you're inclined to roll your own mouse scheme (by using the Browse button to assign cursor files to pointer types), be sure to use the Save As command and give your work a name. That way you'll be able to switch away from it and back to it again at will.

It's worth taking a minute or two to explore the remaining tabs in the Mouse Properties dialog box. Some of the more useful options there are Button Configuration (on the Buttons tab), which lets you swap the roles of the left and right mouse buttons; Display Pointer Trails, in the Visibility section of the Pointer Options tab (this one makes the mouse cursor even easier to find in lousy lighting conditions); and Select A Pointer Speed, in the Motion section of the Pointer Options tab. This last option governs the rate at which the pointer travels in response to mouse movement. If you have switched to a high-DPI setting  and a higher-resolution display, you might also need to increase the pointer speed to accommodate the increased number of pixels on your screen.

6. Configuring Desktop Icons

A fresh, cleanly installed Windows 7 desktop (as opposed to one generated by an upgrade installation) includes a single lonely icon—Recycle Bin. If you want other system icons, right-click the desktop, choose Personalize, and click Change Desktop Icons (in the left pane). The Desktop Icon Settings dialog box, shown below, provides check boxes for five system folders—Computer, the root folder of your own profile (User's Files), Network, Recycle Bin, and Control Panel.

If you're really into customization, you can change any of the five icons that appear in the large box in the center. Note that the Control Panel icon does not appear in this center box even if you select its check box; Windows doesn't provide a way to change it.

To change an icon, select it in the center box and click Change Icon. You'll find an interesting assortment of alternative icons in the file %Windir%\System32\ Imageres.dll. (Be sure to use the horizontal scroll bar to see them all.) If none of those suit you, try browsing to %Windir%\System32\Shell32.dll.

Note:

The icons you choose for system folders become part of a theme, if you save the con figuration as described in the next section. However, other settings for desktop icons, including which ones you choose to display, their size, and their arrangement, are not saved in the theme file, allowing you to safely change themes without the risk of changing any of these customizations.

After you've populated your desktop with icons, you might want to control their arrangement. If you right-click the desktop, you'll find two commands at the top of the shortcut menu that will help in this endeavor. To make your icons rearrange themselves when you delete one of their brethren, click View and then click Auto Arrange Icons. To ensure that each icon keeps a respectable distance from each of its neighbors (and that the whole gang stays together at the left side of your screen), click View, Align Icons To Grid. And if your icons occasionally get in the way (for example, if you want to take an unimpeded look at the current desktop background image), click View, and then click Show Desktop Icons. (Return to this command when you want the icons back.)

To change the sort order of your desktop icons, right-click the desktop and click Sort By. You can sort on any of four attributes: Name, Size, Item Type, or Date Modified. Sorting a second time on any of these attributes changes the sort order from ascending to descending (or vice versa).

7. Saving, Sharing, and Finding Theme Settings

If you've got all the visual and aural aspects of your profile set up just the way you want them, and you want to be able to experiment further but still return to the current settings, it's time to revisit Personalization (right-click the desktop and choose Personalize). At the top of the themes list, in the My Themes category, you'll see Unsaved Theme if you have made changes to whatever theme was previously in effect. To make those changes reusable, click Save Theme and supply a name. (The name you furnish is the display name that appears in Personalization; you needn't follow restrictive file-naming rules that prohibit several common punctuation symbols.)

If you make additional changes, you'll once again generate an Unsaved Theme entry. There's no limit to the number of themes you can create. Windows saves each group of settings as a .theme file in your %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Themes folder. (A .theme file is a standard text file that describes all the theme settings. For complete details about theme files, see "Creating and Installing Theme Files" at w7io.com/0402.) You can delete unwanted items from the My Themes list; simply right-click the item you no longer want and choose Delete Theme. Note that you can't delete the theme that's currently in use.

After you create a theme you like, you might want to use it on your other computers or share it with other users. Because a .theme file is just a text file, it doesn't contain the graphic images of your desktop, the sound files you use for various events, or other necessary files that make up the entire theme experience. For the purpose of sharing themes, Windows uses a .themepack file, which includes the .theme file as well as all other nonstandard theme elements. A .themepack file uses the standard compressed folder (.zip archive) format to envelop its component files. To create a .themepack file of an item in My Themes, first select it to make it the current theme. Then right-click it and choose Save Theme For Sharing. Unless you specify otherwise, Windows saves the .themepack file in the default save location of your Documents library.

To use a theme that was saved in .theme or .themepack format, simply double-click it. (Of course, a .theme file won't offer the full experience if the theme components aren't available on your computer in folders to which you have access.)

Because themes are so easily portable, you can find many compelling Windows 7 themes online. Start your quest by clicking Get More Themes Online (under My Themes in Personalization), where Microsoft offers a nice selection.

Warning:

If you search for themes elsewhere on the internet, be sure to download theme files only from people or companies you know and trust. Some theme elements (most notably, screen savers, which include executable program code) have long been notorious vectors for viruses and spyware. (A study released in 2009 by the security software vendor McAfee found "screen savers" to be the web's most dangerous search term, because the results pages often lead to malware downloads. As Windows 7 gains in popularity, searches for "free themes" are likely to produce risky results too. You can read the study at w7io.com/0403.) Also, other types of malware could be disguised as a theme pack. (That is, you think that by double-clicking a file you're installing a theme, but you could in fact be installing a nefarious program instead.)